A Thousand Masks
by X4uth0r
Summary: Don't be fooled by him. Don't be fooled by the masks that he wears. A thousand masks- masks that he is afraid to take off... and none of them are him. Oneshot.


**This oneshot didn't seem to fit into my other fic, Life of a Spy. I don't actually own this fully, either. I took the poem "Please Hear What I'm Not Saying," written by Charles C. Finn, and edited it, along with adding some stuff. I've scoured the internet and FFN as to see if there are any rules against things like these (like, songfics aren't allowed, and I'm not sure if this counts as one or not). If need be, I will delete it.**

**I do not own _Alex Rider_ or the poem _Please Hear What I'm Not Saying_.**

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><p>Don't be fooled by him.<p>

Don't be fooled by the mask he wears.

Every mission, every person, every mask.

A thousand masks—masks that he is afraid to take off.

He _can't_ take them off.

People would get _hurt (they already _have_)_.

People will _die_.

People _have_ died.

None of the masks are him.

Pretending is an art that is second nature with him.

It keeps him alive.

It's the only way he _survives_.

Don't be fooled.

For _god's_ sake, _don't_ be fooled.

He gives you the impression that he is secure, that all is sunny and unruffled with him, within as well as without.

That confidence is his name and coolness his game.

That the water is calm and he is in command and that he needs no one.

But don't believe him.

For he hides behind his mask, afraid what will happen if he takes off those hundreds of thousands of masks.

He can't afford to take them off.

People get hurt.

People die.

His surface may seem smooth, but his surface is his mask—ever-varying, ever-concealing.

Beneath lies no complacence.

Beneath lies confusion, fear, and aloneness.

But he hides this.

He does not want anybody to know it.

He panics at the thought of his weakness exposed _(people die when I am weak)_.

That is why he frantically create a mask to hide behind, a nonchalant sophisticated facade, to help him pretend.

To shield him from the glance that knows.

But such a glance is precisely his salvation, his only hope, and he knows it.

That is, if it's followed by acceptance.

If it's followed by love.

It is the only thing that can liberate him from himself and his own self-built prison walls

From the barriers he so painstakingly erects.

It's the only thing that will assure him of what he can't assure himself, that he is worth all those lives that he killed—all that he has sacrificed.

But he does not tell you this.

He doesn't dare to.

He is afraid to.

He is afraid that your glance will not be followed by acceptance.

Will not be followed by love.

He is afraid you will think less of him,

That you'll laugh and cry, and it would kill him.

He is afraid that deep-down, he is Death, and that you will see this and reject him.

So he plays his game, his desperate pretending game, with a facade of assurance without and a trembling child within.

So begins the glittering but empty parade of masks, and his life becomes a front.

He idly chats to you in the suave tones of surface talk.

He tells you everything that's really nothing, and nothing of what's everything, of what's crying out within him.

So when he going through his routine... do not be fooled by what he says.

Please listen carefully and try to hear what he is _not_ saying, what he would like to be able to say, what for survival he needs to say... but what he can't say.

He doesn't like hiding.

He doesn't like playing superficial phony games.

He wants to stop playing them.

He want to be genuine and spontaneous and _Alex Rider_.

But you've got to help him.

You've got to hold out your hand, even when that's the last thing he seems to want.

Only you can wipe away from his eyes the blank stare of the breathing dead.

Only you can call him into aliveness.

Each time you're kind, and gentle, and encouraging, each time you try to understand because you really care, his heart begins to grow wings—very small wings, very feeble wings... but _wings_!

With your power to touch him into feeling, you can breathe life into him.

He wants you to know that.

He wants you to know how important you are to him, how you can be a creator—an _honest-to-god_ creator—of the person that is him if you choose to.

You alone can break down the wall behind which he trembles, you alone can remove his mask, you alone can release him from his shadow-world of panic, from his lonely prison, if you choose to.

Please choose to.

Do not pass him by.

It will not be easy for you.

A long conviction of Death builds strong walls.

The nearer you approach to him the blinder he may strike back.

It is irrational, but despite what the books say about man, they are often irrational.

He fights against the very thing he cries out for.

But love is stronger than strong walls, and therein lies his hope.

Please try to beat down those walls, with firm hands but with gentle hands, for a child is very sensitive.

Who is he, you may wonder?

He is someone you know very well.

For he is every man you meet, every woman you meet, every child you meet... he is _Alex Rider_.


End file.
